3 EASY WAYS TO ENSURE TRAFFIC CONTINUALLY FLOWS THROUGH YOUR SITE

You want traffic flowing through your site don’t you? In and out, back and forth, all day and all night? Even if you say you are writing for writing’s sake, you write to let off steam, to put your thoughts on paper, or to inform others of some subject dear to you and it’s very flattering and great for your ego when the traffic is flowing continually through your site.

So what do you do to ensure this? My thoughts on this subject may not be yours, but it works for me.

WRITE GOOD CONTENT – Do your research on the subject beforehand. After you write that good content, edit it! Make sure all your T’s are crossed and your I’s are dotted. Misspelled words are unforgivable in this day and age. Spell check is a finger-tap away – USE IT! Nothing irks me more than to wonder what was meant by a phrase when grammar is used improperly and words are misspelled. Believe me, I’m not perfect and I’m sure I’ve made this mistake plenty when my eyes were crossed from all the reading and writing I’d done that day. You know how it is when you write a text and hit send before giving it a good once-over? Dontlet thet hapenher! See what I mean?

Tony has a point!

RECIPROCATE – So… you went to great lengths to write that piece. You were so proud when you published and right out of the gate you had readers liking and commenting all over the place. You are overwhelmed with their generosity in comments. (Believe me – It’s not always easy to jump in and leave a comment. Make your commenters feel welcome and they will be there for you always.) If you want to keep the ball rolling comment back to them. Yeah, I know. It’s so easy to hit that LIKE button and be on your merry way. DO NOT DO THAT! Replying back to that comment will insure the reader will return another day with another comment in the near future. You may even rack up some followers this way. I’m sure if you have fourteen gazillion commenters it’s hard to keep up and reply to all…but really? How many of us are actually in that position? You probably wouldn’t even be reading this post if you were!

It could lead to great things!

SHARE – I know you have all seen those share buttons at the end of reading a post. Usually they are right up there above the LIKE button and there are usually plenty to choose from. Facebook – Twitter – Linkedin – Pinterest – Tumblr – StumbleUpon – Email. I’m sure I’ve left some out. How easy it is to tap that button and share with the world is inconceivable. Everyone is on Facebook and the majority of us are on Twitter. Did you just read a awe-inspiring post? Did it hit a nerve, projecting your thoughts exactly? Did that post make you giggle or have information you know others would benefit from? All you have to do is tap one or two or even three of those share buttons and you’ve just made a friend with the writer – a writer who may even visit your site and follow you.

It’s so easy to tap that button! Try it – you’ll like it!

No this is not the all time magic act to increase the readership on your blog, but it’s a start and I bet you make a few good friends along the way. Practice makes perfect.

Come on now – I know you want to share this article with your blogger friends on Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. Just do it! Tap-tap-tap! Easy-peasy!

Related

About Elle Knowles

Elle Knowles lives in the Florida Panhandle with her husband and off-at-college-most-of-the-time son. She has four daughters, one son, and eleven beautiful grandchildren. 'Crossing the Line' is her first novel. The sequel 'What Line' is a work in progress. Recently published is Coffee-Drunk Or Blind - a nonfiction story of homesteading in the Alaska wilderness with her parents and four siblings, told through letters by her mother and remembered accounts from the family.

Thank you, Elle, for some down to earth advice. You’re right. That ‘like’ button is too inviting. I have to keep reminding myself to give that blogger the same respect they gave to me. Have a good day! 😊

Hi Elle. What a great post. Just sensible advice. I really agree about the like pressing. Comments take a little time which means you’re taking care and trouble. It makes me a little sad sometimes that some blog posts are written by people who are pouring their lovely hearts out … literally bleeding … and they receive zilch in return. They deserve better. All the very best.Kris. (And thanks for your Follow as well)http://www.awritersden.wordpress.comhttp://www.the1951club.org

hi Elle – great post – you don’t need to reply to me cos I’m already following you – smile!

Well, that makes 3 of us at least who aren’t on facebook, twitter or whatever – literally cana’t be bothered with them – tho it seems most people are – and they are great for promotion – would anyone like to promote my posts for me? Not a joke, I’m serious – ish – smile

check out julzcrafts.com
and julzcard.wordpress.com – where anyone from anywhere it welcome to leave their own links – so that’s the best I can do about increasing readership!

hope you don’t mind my plugs Elle, but it is all about that – this post – isn’t it?

And no I can’t work out how the Google system works either – a lot of the blogs on the A-Z challenge are not on WordPress, and don’t even have a like button – they presume you’re on the social media and use those – and the only option on Google seems to be to add them to a group – how on earth do the groups work people?

Thank you for sharing this great post. I love responding to comments but don’t always share posts as much as I could do. I do however use an app called Buffer that lets me schedule tweets in advance. It has a plugin on my browser so I can easily share things I find interesting, making the whole process much easier.

Its all about paying it forward. What I like about Buffer is that it links up with existing social media accounts, facebook, twitter etc and schedules things for you. Also a real person replied back within a couple of hours when I had a problem one weekend.

This is great and sooooo true! I’m working on my social media as of late and I’m trying to find ways to automate as much as possible so that it stays fresh when I am away. It’s hard. I’ve abandoned my personal medias for a blog version. I like that better actually. Now I interact on all with that losing screws filter in my mind. It’s really helped me feel less overwhelmed with it. But I imagine many won’t be willing to ditch their personal accounts!

I don’t link my post to my Facebook account because I blog anonymously and my Facebook account is in my real name. I also don’t do Twitter because, well, I just don’t. But I do try to write good content and I do reciprocate by responding to most comments. So far, it’s worked fairly well for me.

Elle, you are being really good about the social media aspect of this . I like the common sense post! Sometimes I do get overwhelmed as you can see I haven’t posted on Facebook or Twitter over the weekend, it was just too much this week, I think I need to figure out a schedule so there aren’t any lapses.
There’s definitely not one silver bullet out there for more traffic unfortunately, because one of the biggest bloggers on WordPress.com is Harsh Reality and he doesn’t really push any social media, majority of his 50,000 followers are bloggers from both WordPress sites. And I don’t know how he does it, besides good, funny, controversial content and replying on almost all of his comments of course. So I guess you have to find the right combination that works for each blog but these points are a good jumping off point for all the newbies like me out here. Once I get into a groove, I will see what gives me the most return on my effort..but in the meantime I’m working all the majors.
Good luck to you as well Elle!

It’s a little bit of trial and error, but these three points are really common sense as you said. You also have to promote, market, visit other sites, mingle with others, etc. It’s a never ending battle Trudy! ~Elle

I totally agree! The easiest for me is the Blogging University courses because I am getting writing training (which I need) out of it. I think for anyone who is introverted like me, it’s a great first step. Now I’ve started the Writing101 so again I am in “class” with people at all different levels and it takes the pressure off while I’m learning to socialize and get your feet wet.

Like 39yearslame, I am not on any other social media. While I know Google is considered SM now, I am only part of one private group. It’s specialized. Word Press is the only place I’ve really been part of a social like environment… okay, one other, but an encapsulated Gateworld forum, which pretty much is far removed from the rest of the world.

That’s why I’m taking the Writing 101 course, to meet others here, on the street where I live. 🙂

I wish more people would follow that first one. I’m so sick of seeing things on the Internet with common words misspelled. And mis-used (or missing) apostrophes. Those drive me up the wall. (Though they’re not just on the Internet: I found a flyer in the handle of the screen door of my house for a lawn-mowing service, promising that it had “a plan that fit’s every budget!” Seriously. And on the same page, it promised “quality work.” Which obviously didn’t extend to their flyer-making abilities…) I actually have a running post to keep track of/inform people about common (and not so common) errors, but it doesn’t get any attention, even after I put a link to it on my sidebar.

However, I do have to disagree with one, minor point: not *everyone* is on Facebook. Maybe most people are, but there are still a few anti-social people like me who refuse to open an account there. (WordPress is, in fact, the only social media platform I’m involved in. Though I suppose, technically, I do have a Google+ profile, but it’s just floating out there doing nothing with nobody, so that hardly counts. I don’t even know what it’s for; it just came with my gmail account.)

Oooh…I hope I don’t make your list anytime soon, but never say never! 😉 I can’t figure out Google, so you aren’t alone there. Our profiles are probably friends out there in space! Thanks for stopping by. ~Elle

So far, my list is mostly composed of misused homophones from student works I’ve read in class…and a few from professionally published books. (Those are the ones that really scare me. Someone was paid to edit those, and didn’t fix mistakes that were actually pretty bizarre.)

The problem stems from not having a beta reader. People can’t proof their own stuff because they know what they’ve meant to say, and their eyes see through the words they have in their head, not what they’ve put down on paper. Proofing is best done by someone else. I’ve been in publishing, and it is an integral part of the writer’s tools, or should be. Editors are a must. People just don’t know that.

It would be nice to have a Beta Reader for your blog wouldn’t it? I have something better – my daughter. If I publish with a mistake she is on top of it in minutes. I don’t know how many times she has called me on it in Facebook and WordPress. I should just give her my passwords and then she can repair the damage! LOL! ~Elle

But that is having a Beta Reader! Perfect! Just another pair of eyes, to catch bloopers which are more difficult for us to see. Here’s the other weird thing. Sometimes, no matter how many times I go over what I wrote, in the text box, the minute I publish, and read it from there, I see something that needs to be changed. It’s seeing it in another ‘format’ so to speak.

That’s true. Whenever I look over something I wrote right away, I miss most of my mistakes, but if I look at something I wrote weeks or months earlier, I notice the typos and such that I missed the first time.
I think that’s one of the reasons my (real) fiction just sits on my hard drive not doing anything; I don’t have anyone to read it for me and give me pointers on fixing it. (Though that’s not so much the small, grammatical mistakes as the major story-telling mistakes…)